Hayley Frances
Tues, 5th Nov, 19:00
Discover how names connect us to identity, place, family, time and how we can conjure or mould our own ‘drinking names’ into unique poetry.
Tue, 5 Nov 2024 19:00 - 21:00 GMT
What is in a name? How are names acquired, chosen by or conferred upon the bearer? How can they be magicked into the complex narratives that can engender distinctive poetry? If you are a Ghanaian Ewe, like Dzifa Benson, along with your given name and surname, you also have a ‘drinking name’.
It represents your philosophical aspirations, history and how you wish to be seen in the world. In this playful workshop, we’ll borrow from this Ghanaian tradition to dig into the potency of names and naming traditions to discover how they connect us to identity, place, family, time and how we can conjure or mould our own ‘drinking names’ into unique poetry.
NB Zoom links to the individual workshops will arrive in your inbox 48 hours before each workshop. Please check your junk folder.
Dzifa Benson was born in London to Ghanaian parents and grew up in Ghana, Nigeria and Togo. She is an award-winning multidisciplinary artist whose work intersects literature, science, theatre, art, the body, ritual, performance and immersive technologies. Her work has been awarded fellowships from the Jerwood Foundation and Hedgebrook, and shortlisted for the Bridport Prize and James Berry Poetry Prize. Her arts criticism appears in the Financial Times, the Telegraph and Poetry Review and she has held poetry, curatorial and editorial residences at Whitstable Biennale, Orleans House Gallery and Granta Magazine. Her adaptation of the National Youth Theatre 2021 production of Othello toured the UK and she is currently adapting Roger Robinson’s T S Eliot prize-winning A Portable Paradise for the same organisation. Dzifa holds a masters in Text & Performance from RADA and Birkbeck, and her debut poetry collection, Monster, will be published by Bloodaxe Books in October 2024.